Well, I think in my last blog, I mixed up a couple of days...I'm doing so much and going so many places I'm afraid my over 50 year old brain is mixing things up. Anyway, a few words about the Baby Room Conference.
Friday was the day of the University of Christ Church Third Annual Baby Room Conference, at which I was a keynote. What a lovely setting and a wonderful day. There were about 125 or so participants, of all stripes -- caregivers, program directors/managers, trainers, professional development folks, regulators, etc. Hard to plan exactly for talking to such a diverse audience, but I think I hit the right note. I did a speech with slides and lots of pictures of US baby rooms to back me up. I largely hit the high points of what we do in the US and the major philosophies that influenc our thinking. It seemed well-received.
A funny thing happened though, resulting I think from my starting off my speech with a quote from Helen Raikes who said, "Caring for infants and toddlers is Holy Work." I was trying to make the point of how vitally important what we all do in birth to three is, that we need to believe in its importance, etc. Well, one of the exhibitors was a group of folks from Community Playthings. They are deeply religious folks, Anabaptists from the US who have many of the beliefs that the Amish and Menonites do. The man from Community Playthings just LOVED my message and apparently me (or thought my soul might be worthy of saving) and followed me about the rest of the day. He presented me with one of their books about the importance of children from their religious perspective and a list of places that their communities are located nearby to Canterbury for me to visit! It was quite an experience.
It did bring me back to conversations I've been having all week with Kathy Goouch about the words that we use. One that we have batted about a lot is what to call the person who works with very young children. There are problems, for instance with "caregiver" and "teacher," and these words mean very different things in the US and UK. A caregiver here is a lower ranked early childhood professional, one without the professional credentials that a teacher holds. We tend to use the terms interchangeably in the US, although some I/T professionals are adamant about being called "teachers" thinking that "caregiver" is something that is less than a professional. I've been arguing over the past few years that we should be reclaiming the word and title "care" in what we do because it is so highly important in the social/emotional health and well-being of young children. Here in the UK Kathy and she says many others have trouble with the word "teacher" because it implies education in a didactic, lesson-driven sense. So, she got out the thesaurus and I got on Google and we tried to come up with other possible words for what we do. The best fit, although we don't think it will fly, is mentor. We wanted a word that implied someone who shared the experience with the child, wasn't dominating, but recognized that the person was wiser or perhaps more knowledgable in that they had something to contribute to them. So many words suggest the professional is "giving" something or "doing" something to the child, rather than supporting, nurturing, and guiding them. The thesaurus also suggested "lion-tamer" as a possibility, but that suggests something else entirely.
Hey, Mary! I am loving reading your posts and so glad you're having a good trip. Thinking about your endeavor to create or discover another term for I/T professionals, I was reminded of the same concerns when I received Montessori training many years ago. The term, director (or directress in more old-fashioned times), was commonly used to emphasize the role of the adult in the classroom, which was to direct or guide children in their learning from the environment or each other, rather than only from the teacher. I hadn't thought about this in a long time, but it came to mind when considering your discussion about terms like caregiver and teacher. It isn't easy to find a designation that everyone agrees is respectful and clear in its meaning, but well worth the effort.
ReplyDeleteWe miss you around here, so don't fall too in love with all that you are experiencing!
Melissa
So interesting what you are saying about what to call our early childhood professionals who take care of babies. I was just having this exact conversation with a friend of ours who is a graphic designer and helps us with our marketing. We are redoing our website and he was reading through some of our text. When we got to the section on our infant house (6 weeks to 18 months), he stopped me and asked about using the word "teacher" there to describe the caregivers, saying that it didn't sound right to him. I responded exactly as you have said above, that to me saying "caregiver" took away from the professionalism my teachers work so hard for. But I agree, teacher does seem cold and out of place when taking care of our youngest. Perhaps we should take back ahold of what "caregiver" means to give it the proper status it deserves!
ReplyDeleteI agree that caregiver is a label we ought to try to reclaim! But it seems a tall order in our culture at this time. Carers, unfortunately, do not seem to receive the same level of respect as teachers, professors, or business people-- though they should! And with all we have learned about the capacity of babies to learn in the past 20 years, the aspect of caring that is educational does seem to need more emphasis. I wonder why Magda Gerber's favorite term, "educarer" never caught on?
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